


The Abyss

by MegumitheGreat



Category: Free!
Genre: Attempt at Suspense, Dream Analysis, M/M, Magicians, Mentions of Suicide, Symbolic death, ballroom party, dream figures, swimming games, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 00:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20165203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegumitheGreat/pseuds/MegumitheGreat
Summary: Haru and his mother are invited to a party.  When Haru finds someone that looks a lot like Makoto, the two stick together during it.





	The Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this idea for a little bit now. Finally wrote it.
> 
> **There is a brief mention of suicide.**

It was a strange occasion, one that Haru wouldn’t have expected. He hadn’t seen his parents—specifically his mother—in a rather long time, so to see her and to hear her say that they were invited to this extravagant shindig out the blue made him somewhat confused. There was little to no time to get properly dressed because the party had already started. At least, according to her.

And it took them no time at all to get to the venue. They entered the extravaganza, the walls of the ballroom colored a velvety red and hundreds of people standing around with champagne and expensive-looking suits and dresses. Whether it was a trick of the eye caused by the somewhat dim lighting or because he was among strangers, Haru was sure that most everyone at the party was without a face.

“Mom, are you sure we’re at the right place?” Haru asked his mother.

“Of course, we are,” his mother assured. “I double-checked the address and everything.”

Still, Haru was dubious, and he had every right to be. He didn’t know who these people were, why he was there, or even _where_ they were. The atmosphere teetered between that of a palace’s ball and a giant cruise ship. He couldn’t ignore these things, especially when there was this feeling of anxious anticipation bubbling in his stomach. He felt out of place.

“Did you get invited, too?” a young voice asked him.

Haru’s clear blue eyes shifted down to someone standing up to his thigh. It was a small child with olive hair and beautiful green eyes. He looked a lot like Makoto, but the child was rather fat. His initial reaction was one of surprise; Makoto had never been overweight as a little boy—in fact, he could argue that he was a bit on the leaner side until his junior high years when all that time spent swimming paid off to develop his muscles. But it had to be him because his face was so familiar. He had been with Makoto since they were just babies. There was no way he could mistake that face. Furthermore, in those green eyes, he got a sense of bravery and intelligence—even stranger since Haru knew that Makoto was easily startled by the darkness and whatever horror stories Nagisa conjured up.

Yet he couldn’t recall his name himself. It was only a lingering feeling, a persistent thought that his name had to be Makoto. And he couldn’t ask him, thus he couldn’t confirm nor deny that it was him. His weight threw him off though it shouldn’t have. But it wasn’t like he looked exhausted or ill. The small child had the aura closer to a happy fat baby than anything else.

“Y-Yeah, I did,” Haru finally answered him.

“We can be friends, then,” Makoto—for lack of any other name—said happily. He grasped his hand. His fingers were a little pudgy themselves. “Let’s go get something to eat, okay? The dining hall is this way.”

“Eat?” Haru asked unsure about leaving his mom among people she didn’t know. He turned to her to find that a woman who appeared to be Makoto’s mom—equally as big as her son—talking and laughing with his mom. “Ah…”

“Mom loves making new friends!” Makoto smiled. “Come on, let’s go get some food!”

Haru really didn’t have much of a choice at this point. This Makoto-impostor took his hand, and he soon found himself pushing through the crowds of rich folk toward the halls to get to where the food was. The image of his mother receding, he still couldn’t help but be nervous that some random kid wearing his best friend’s face was pulling him somewhere he didn’t know.

The mood of entire party changed just like that once they left the ballroom. The halls were empty, and it was eerily quiet. The raucous laughter that filled the previous room was completely silence after the doors closed.

Makoto continued to guide Haru down the halls. Every few paces, they passed a branching hall that deterred from the main hall they were in. Eventually, curiosity got the better of the raven-haired swimmer. He paused for a moment to look down one of the halls. Despite the dimness he saw clearly that there was a change that sent chills through his body. His vision had become telescopic, homing in deeper and deeper down the hall without him walking to it. There was a point on the walls where the deep red velvet drained and morphed into this cold grey steel, and even farther than that was an unending black nothingness. And it was cold, so cold. Although he was nowhere near this precarious black hole and its frigidness, his breath condensed into swirling wisps. He was uneasy, a crawling mass of tendrils encroaching on the back of his mind like some sort of monster.

“Let’s go, or else they’ll run out of food,” Makoto whined.

“O-Okay,” Haru said, snapping back to himself. He left the hall with the strange darkness at his new friend’s behest. The image, however, was etched into his mind. Just what was that void? Why did it feel like his mind was sinking deeper and deeper into himself where all he could think was to kil—

The two of them came to the dining hall. It was red just like the ballroom, but the carpet was a gold design that seemed somewhat tacky. Wealthy-looking people were here as well, but there were more people that seemed a little more casual mixed in with them. They were all gathering around the rows and rows of televisions and video games depicting swimming races and fighters. At first Haru wanted to try his hand. Makoto asked him politely:

“Do you mind getting me something to eat? I want to play a couple rounds first. I won’t be too long, promise.”

Haru was now even more confused. Sure, they played video games every now and again. But was Makoto adept at them enough to play competitively? He got that sense of intelligence and bravery again, as if it were a badge of courage pinned to his shirt.

“Okay, would you like mackerel?” he asked.

“If they have ribs or anything like that, can you get that?”

Haru was somewhat put-off. Ribs? Since when did Makoto eat ribs? He obliged, though. He wouldn’t deny him whatever he wanted. He made him swear that he would stay right there playing games before leaving for the buffet laid on the biggest table. He looked over the food options with wonder and amazement. Lobster and steak and all sorts of fine foods lined the table. And right next to a fancy platter of vegetables, there was a stack of barbecue ribs glistening under the chandelier. There was no mackerel, much to Haru’s dismay.

He pulled a slab of ribs for the boy and, knowing that he was probably still a growing boy who would eat about anything, he put a few crowns of steamed broccoli and roasted red potatoes on the plate. It was a rather American selection, so he was unsure if any of it tasted good. It looked delicious, but Haru never did grow out of his picky eating enough to try any of it himself.

With the plate of food, he returned to the televisions and video games. “I brought you some food,” he quietly said.

Makoto didn’t hear him. Upon closer inspection, he was focusing intensely on the fighting game before him. His opponent? Just a regular-looking college kid with a bad temper and a penchant for being a sore loser. Haru watched Makoto play and defeat anyone that dared to challenge him until finally, the child seemed satisfied that he had won enough rounds.

“Shall we go back?” Makoto asked him.

“Sure.”

After giving Makoto the plate of food, which disappeared almost instantly, the two began the walk back to the ballroom. And again, the atmosphere changed. The halls were darker, and this time there were a few people walking down them as well. The feeling that Haru had gotten had returned. His vision zoomed in, or perhaps even panned like scenes in movies did, to a pair of figures shrouded in black cloaks. Their faces were hidden, but they weren’t anything like grim reapers. They were magical like magicians.

The figures stood at the opening of a pair of doors that led into the same darkness Haru had seen before instead of the ballroom like before. Holding onto Makoto’s hand, he listened hard to what they were saying. It was all too quiet to hear them. Regardless, his eyes told him what was happening. The people, all dressed in their rich clothes and gaudy jewelry, ventured into the darkness with subzero temperatures. The farther they went in, the slower they walked until finally they were freezing where they were, so quickly that they stopped mid-step. Frost covered them, and their skin blistered and cracked from the cold. The magicians said something about making sure everyone at the party had traverse this hall of death. These people, whoever they were, had no choice but to walk down these halls.

“I’m…I’m scared,” Haru said. Fear! That was it—that was the feeling that was scratching at his mind and making his heart race. An impending doom settling into his bones, he stopped walking before the magicians noticed. “We shouldn’t go there. We _cannot_ go there. I just know something bad will happen. I’ll die. I’ll be miserable and kill myself. We have to find some way to escape.”

“It’s okay,” Makoto told him. He tightened his grip on his hand. “There are plenty of halls. We can go around them. Just stay close to me.”

The two of them turned down a different hallway, the cold seeping into Haru’s body despite having walked away from the endless abyss that threatened to freeze him to death. He just couldn’t shake it off. He clung to Makoto, who was still the size of a child yet felt tall and warm like he usually did. That warmth permeated into him, a wave of calm coming over him. He was safe for now, but the magicians were going to be looking for them soon. They had to escape before they were caught.

And they knew they were after them.

The magicians knew they were trying to escape.

They knew that they were going to escape with their mothers, and they just couldn’t have that! The magicians made their move.

Haru and Makoto returned to the ballroom. Time was running out. The magicians would be there any minute. They had to leave. Now. But their mothers weren’t there in the ballroom. Perhaps they were already gone? Or maybe they had already been caught? There was no time to check which outcome had happened. They ran to the door leading out of the venue, and waiting in the glorious sunlight of the day…

“There you are!” Haru’s mother cried. “I’ve been trying to contact you all day! Why weren’t you answering?”

Haru watched her. Makoto let go of him to return to his mom, but before he did, he turned to him.

“I never learned your name!” he realized.

“It’s Haruka Nanase,” Haru answered him.

“Okay, good-bye, Haru-chan! I had a lot of fun!”

In the blink of an eye, Haru and his mother were in the car preparing to drive. It was when he was in the safety of the vehicle that he turned on his phone to find a message from a group chat he had started with Rin and Ikuya. They had sent an ominous message to him:

IKUYA:  
You need to get out of there.

RIN:  
Yeah, those magicians are like god-tiered sorcerers. They harvest body parts to use in their magic, and they use these weird big parties to attract people to kill.

“Mom, start driving,” Haru ordered his mother. The fear had returned stronger than before.

“I-I am!” his mother panicked.

Then there was a sudden change again when they pulled out of the parking lot and started down the road. The feeling of imminent danger trickled away the farther they got from the party venue. There was no way the magicians could follow him now. There was no direction they needed to go. Only a peace of mind that allowed him to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Everything okay?” Haru’s mom asked him.

“Yeah, I think so,” he replied. He settled into his car seat. The golden rays of the sun shined on his face. He didn’t know where he was going, but he felt like it was a place he wanted to be. He felt like he was going to the ocean.

\-------------------------------------------

“Damn, and that was all just a dream?” Rin laughed. He munched on some French fries. “Why don’t you pitch that to an anime company? That’s a full-blown television episode, or it could be like that one movie.”

“Do you think it means anything?” Ikuya asked. “Vivid dreams like that might have some meaning to it.”

It was just like them. Rin saw the fantastic theatrics and exciting movie aspect. Ikuya, ever-the-romanticist, wondered if there was a reason he had had that dream.  
Haru stared at his glass of water. He was sitting in a fast food restaurant with them, and Makoto had only just sat down after coming from the bathroom. He was the first to hear of the dream. He wasn’t well-versed in the realm of dream analysis. Curiosity had gotten the better of him, though.

“Both Haru and I actually did a little analysis this morning on the train here,” he admitted. He cleared his throat, pulling out a notebook of dream symbols and their meanings. There had been a lot of detail in the analysis, but the conclusion that they had come to was, “Come what may, as long as Haru stays true to himself and puts up the effort and time, he’s going to achieve his goal of swimming at the global level.”

Rin and Ikuya couldn’t help but laugh at the flowery analysis, much to Makoto’s chagrin. But Haru wasn’t embarrassed. Making it to the global stage would take time, patience, and hard-work. He knew many people that wanted to help him, and he had to seize every opportunity he was given to make it happen. Sitting with Rin and Ikuya—his friends and his rivals—he knew more than ever that he couldn’t give up. There was no time for that; he had to keep swimming.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, the first section was a dream that I had last week. It's the first dream I had that instilled in me a very real fear of death and unhappiness, and it's the very first dream I've ever had in which I saw the abyss leading to the Unconscious. Having a psychology bachelor's and an interest in dream analysis, I did a little decoding and found that for as freaky as this dream was, it was actually a very positive dream. And it felt like a dream that Haru would have.
> 
> The ultimate meaning of the dream is to persevere and not give up, and good fortune will come your way. Of course, there's some stuff about my own insecurities and all that, but I want to focus on the good aspects. (Also kind of a nod to a certain anime studio not to let events get them down and out. You can do it!)


End file.
